PASADENA - Dr. Eric Walsh, the city's health director, Thursday told attendees the mayor's annual prayer breakfast that the prescription for a healthy Pasadena has little to do with the medical system.

Walsh, president of the California Academy of Preventive Medicine, said it has more to do with reducing inequality in income and education, offering access to housing and safe environments and caring for children and the elderly, he said.

Citing Mother Teresa, Walsh said being unwanted, unloved and not cared for is the greatest kind of poverty.

"I submit to you as we pray for this city, as we look at the huge problems that come before us, one of the easiest things we can do is reverse the worst kind of poverty," Walsh said.

"You don't have to start an AIDS Foundation to care. One of the most important things the city can do that we should support is mentoring programs," particularly for high school students and youth who need guidance, he said to applause.

Walsh, who served two administrations on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, and his two brothers were raised by a single mother; his father left the family when Walsh was 2 years old. Walsh's mother had to listen to the whispers of those who said her three sons would never amount to anything because she was a single mom, he said.

"It was mentors all along the way that kept me in line, that showed me the right path, that showed me the difference between right and wrong and it doesn't cost anything," Walsh said.

Martin Gordon of the Pasadena Community Coalition said he was happy to hear Walsh speak about the importance of love as a foundation.

"We want no more dead kids, not by the police, not by gangs, not by violence," Gordon said. "I think the words of Dr. Walsh reinforced that for us because sometimes we forget that health is not about medicine. It's preventing death - not just the medical piece of it but the social piece."

In his remarks Mayor Bill Bogaard asked attendees to pray for the family of slain teen Kendrec McDade and the two police officers who shot him on March 24.

"I urge all of us to offer prayers and support to the family of Kendrec McDade, to the Pasadena Police Department and particularly the officers who were involved in that event and their families, and to all of Pasadena," he told hundreds of attendees gathered at the Pasadena Hilton on the National Day of Prayer.